Customer Reviews

Death Trap (Alaska Mysteries)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Musher Jessie Arnold is laid up with a bad knee and is unable to train or participate in the Iditerod race which has been the focus of much of her life in recent years. Her sled dogs are farmed out to a friend for training and the only dog she has kept with her is her lead dog, Tank. Feeling very bored, Jessie receives an invitation to help out with a booth at the Alaska State Fair. She agrees, and soon she and Tank are in the middle of things at this busy event. A death occurs, and people become concerned about their safety. Meanwhile a young boy and a senior citizen steal away from their respective homes and join forces to elude their captors. Most of the story is told by flashbacks which definitely detract from the suspense since the reader already knows that the characters are safe. Author Henry brings back a former lover of Jessie's but somehow, her instant acceptance of him, despite a long absence, does not ring true. Having just returned from a trip to Alaska, I was looking forward to the author's usual wonderful descriptions of this area, but I was disappointed that this particular book was lacking in that respect. I gave the book 3 stars because it lacks the suspense and the vivid descriptions of others in the series.

Sue Henry has provided her faithful readers with an ultimately cozy mystery. In the first two pages of the book, we learn not only that heroine and Iditarod-musher Jessie Arnold's beloved lead dog, Tank, is going to get dog-napped, but also that everything turns out all right in the end. In these days when reading the newspaper provides all the unpleasant suspense a reader could ask for, I felt very grateful to Ms. Henry for eliminating my worries about Tank, and allowing me to read with pure pleasure.

Tank is already one of the most well-rounded characters in the Jessie Arnold series, and the depth of characterization (without undue anthropomorphism) of this quadruped and his relation to Jessie distinguish this series. Readers who value those talents of Ms. Henry will not be disappointed by this novel.

I bet some people are going to say, "What is a light mystery?" I guess for me it's a book that is not gruesome or heavy on the gore, and though it's a good read, the writing is not the best. I'd never read one of Henry's books before, and I enjoyed learning more about Alaska. The writing is a bit confusing because the author is writing from the point of view that all the 'good' people involved in the mystery are sitting around a fire and explaining what their part in the mystery was. So it jumps back and forth between this scenario and each of the characters (besides the main character). I don't think I've seen this type of setup before, or not since Agatha Christie or I think one of the Sherlock Holmes stories used this way of presenting the plot...

Henry is obviously a dog lover, as I am, and the abuse any dogs makes me angry. I would hope no one would ever pull a stunt on a dog or a person similar to the one done by the sadistic predator in this story. Henry's books are good enough, that if I come upon them again, I will most probably pick it up and read it. But with all the serious reading I do, the biographies and histories and science I want to get to and the mystery writers who I really think are good writers...I won't go looking for Ms. Henry's books.

Karen Sadler

Jessie Arnold is back as the main character of Henry's novel "Death Trap". She is frustrated and not used to being only partially mobile. She is recovering from the knee injury caused by falling down the hill (last book) and is unable to train her dogs. She still has Tank at home with her along with a few others but she is under strict doctors orders to not train them and Billy is coming by to tend to the ones that are not out being trained with a friend.

Jessie answers a friend's call to help at the Alaska State Fair in the Iditarod booth. She and Tank jump at the possibility to get out and do something constructive.

Two other fun characters are also woven into the story. Frank, an octogenarian and "escapee" from a nursing home and Danny, a youth who escapes to the fair, though he was told to mow the lawn. There will also be a surprise character that Sue Henry fans will recognize and love.

Jessie, Frank and Danny accidentally stumble onto the plot, or are dragged in, to rob the collected monies from the state fair. This plot results in the kidnapping of both Tank and Jessie as well as the death of a few others.

This book has a fun format. The story is told as the characters are all sitting around Jessie's home talking about their part in the story. This book reminds me of the earlier Henry novels where it was fast paced and had me laughing out loud as well as gasping. I also absolutely LOVED the surprise character. Bravo, that has been missing for a while.

After a long wait for this book I was disappointed to find it not the authors normally great work. The writing style was choppy and hard to follow. The was plot weak and the content not very interesting.

It took a little bit to get used to the different format of the book but i got used to it and i liked it once i got used to the different style. I probably won't reccamend this for a first time sue henry reader cause her other books i think are a little better.

Goodreads Description- No author on the crime fiction scene brings the beauty, mystery, majesty, and danger of the Alaskan frontier more vibrantly alive than critically acclaimed award winner Sue Henry. Now she takes us due north once more to this rugged land that famed "musher" and sometime sleuth Jessie Arnold calls home -- a breathtaking world where the summers are brief and winters, like death, are cold and long.

With August drawing to a close, Jessie Arnold is feeling empty. Not even the return of a friend can lessen her disappointment over having to miss the approaching Alaskan dogsled racing season because of her recent knee surgery. But a request to help man the Iditarod booth at the Alaska State Fair is a godsend, something that keeps Jessie involved and happy . . . until a corpse turns up on the fairgrounds.

The murder is an especially brutal one: a small-time hoodlum dispatched by a double-blade axe blow to the skull. Though she has already seen too much death in her lifetime, Jessie becomes a participant in the proceedings when her beloved lead sled dog, Tank, vanishes. Angry and sick with worry, she sets out to find him and unwittingly discovers connections that link Tank's disappearance to the murder and a recent theft in bizarre and disturbing ways.

Friends new and old are soon involved as well. Musher Lynn Ehlers, the parents of a local boy, and state troopers are plunged into a desperate and harrowing search that leads them across lush forested valleys, up silent, forbidding mountains, and into Alaska's darkest heart. Because, suddenly, a sled dog is not the only missing player in this drama. Under alarming circumstances, Jessie Arnold has also vanished.

This is the first time that I have read Sue Henry. I had to read a "sports mystery" to read as part of a reading challenge. I wasn't sure what to expect because by the description it seemed like it would be mystery "light". I was right but I also found myself enjoying the book. The book is part of a series surrounding the main character, Jessie Arnold and I did not feel like I was missing out on anything important that may have been presented in earlier books. As the description says, Jessie is a professional musher who is not able to take part in the annual Iditarod race due to a recent knee injury so she decides to help out at the Alaska State Fair in the Iditarod booth. From there the story takes off with a senior citizen who has snuck off from his Senior Center pairing up with a young boy who accidentally has taken a camera bag belonging to someone who may be a suspect in a murder of a man on the fairgrounds. As they are being chased by the suspect, Jessie's dog is taken and Jessie, while looking for Tank, goes missing as well. State troopers Phil Becker and Alex Jensen, Jessie's former love interest, are on the case of this convuluted mystery.

The story is written in an interesting way. The actual plot is revealed in the storytelling of the participating characters as there are sitting in Jessies house, in the present, recapping the events that have happened in the past few days. The reader follows the mystery as the characters are filling each other in on details that not everyone may know. It was nice hearing the characters thoughts after the mystery was solved. It gave the story closure that I really value in a novel.

The criticism that I have of the book is the way the State Troopers investigated. They were far to involved personally. I know the personalization gave the story more emotion but it also hindered how police actually would investigate this kind of crime. The publication date is 2003, which in my mind, isn't that far from 2012. I kept wanting to yell at them to check phone records and quit putting things off until later. That was frustrating to me. The actual police procedural was nothing like it should have been for the year 2003 and the story did not take place in the past. It was written as if in the present time of 2003. They ignored how to look into cell phone records, GPS, and actual crime scene investigation. Evidence was often tainted or written off as "that couldn't possibly have anything to do with the crime". It often had me yelling in my head at the officers to quite being so stupid. It also became pretty clear who the culprit was very early on in the story, which was disappointing.

So there are some good and bad things about this book, but nothing that stands out for me to say that I didn't like the book. So I give it 3 stars, I liked it. But I wouldn't tell anyone to go out and buy the book. Find it at a library because I definitely wouldn't want to spend money on it.

Enjoyed this book in the series by Sue Henry! I look forward to every book by her. I lived in Alaska for many years and love to hear her descriptions of the places that I love!

I do enjoy this author's books, and more so since the overbearing and too take-charge Jensen left the series. I thought Jessie was delveloping more as her own character and then back he comes in this one (and taking over right where he left off-- yuck). The character of friend/musher Lynn had it right when he questioned Jensen making himself at home in Jessie's new cabin and basically taking over, unasked. I enjoy the Alaska setting and the dog races plus the dogs themselves are a wonderful part of this series. I have the next book in the series ready to start and I hope that Jensen is removed soon (and perhaps finally gone-- dare I say killed? since these are murder mysteries). His character really does not add anything to Jessie's character, and she could find other romantic possibilites when she has a chance to do so. He feels like too-much and she is too-less with him in the picture.

This is one of my favorite Sue Henry books. I like the way it is written with everybody reflecting on what happened. It ties together characters from former books. Overall, I really enjoyed it.